Reflection Analysis

Outline, planning, revising, rough and final draft, grading. This is the typical process for writing an essay, I however as a young high school student never followed this. I started with an idea in my head and go on from there. I never considered a need to plan and prepare an outline, just to write a rough draft that I would have to revise, draft, and draft again. It would just be easier to start writing the final draft first right? No. This class has taught me many strategies on how to accustom my writing to a college level. Over the semester in this class I have grown, learned how to effectively draft, and experienced argumentative writing first hand.

I’ve always struggled to break the boundaries entangled within the composition of traditional essays. Between AP Language/Literature courses and AP U.S. History, my writing had become noticeably formulaic; I relied heavily on templates and felt awkward abandoning the traditional five paragraph essay. Although the formulaic way of writing assisted in my capability to critically recognize the difference between opinion and evidence, the patterns were not helpful in developing my organizational skills. My ability to form argumentative ideas from given prompts strengthened, while unity and coherence within paragraphs proved to be my downfall. It was not until my second semester of English at the University of Georgia that I noticed my organization was not comprehensible to the reader. Some paragraphs were like mazes; they left the reader wondering how the first sentence connected to the following sentence. Along with organization, English 1102 helped identify my lack of transitional phrases within paragraphs and the tendency for my argument to shift. Nonetheless, this course has highlighted my strengths as a writer, including my ability to incorporate evidence so that it supports an intelligent, challenging thesis.

I was taught the traditional five paragraph essay was the correct way to go. Again my world was opened up and new ideas came hammering in. I observed how my writing and thinking was loathingly filled with flaws, as my work was torn apart right in front of me. This particular course worked so much in my favor because I was open to changing my style. As an example in my first inventive writing lies a faulty pronoun and antecedent, “It seems fair to claim everyone has their own meandering process,” in my next essay a similar mistake is made, “Someone can have straight A’s for life, but they will never be able to tell who they are,” but in my next two pieces of writing no pronoun and antecedent disagreements can be found. The criticism, critiques, and my own willingness all helped me develop a better style of

I printed out this email and I highlighted the answers we were to bubble in. However, once we began to bubble in the answers there was a problem. The overwhelming majority of the students did not know their address. This created a major problem because I was given only one paper with the students’ address. Thus, I had to spend the majority of the time helping students with their addresses. Around 10:50 Tammy Becker walked in and told my class that we were being too loud (I was doing my best helping students fill out their address). She said we were to start the test at 11:05 am. As a result, I made sure we did start the test at 11:05 am. At 11:05 am the students began testing. I followed everything we were instructed to do during the PSAT.

Peer review helped me notice my spelling mistakes, and some sentence structures. One of my main problems that I always face is while writing “there” and “their”, I always get mixed up between them, and I never notice them. I learned from my mistakes that I should notice my mistakes especially the one I mentioned previously and to re-read my essay and make sure it is complete with no mistakes.

Afterward, I made a start in editing my work; use the English dictionary in checking for spelling and use of the Thesaurus in changing some of the words that will give more depth to my sentences. By proofreading, I identify and rectify some errors in punctuations and grammar. Reading my work out loud to my family and for them to give some constructive criticism helped me find if the reader can understand the purpose of my text. The final step that I did was to make sure the fonts, the font size and spacing of paragraphs meets the required format. Using these methods in practice is an effective exercise to improve my skills in writing essay and heightened my reading

The first feedback I received from my peers was very crucial into the development in my final essay. In my draft, I had two short essay. One about how dirt bike riding was important to me, and the other on how someone who affected me wrongfully but developed me into the person I am today. Out of five of my peers, they all chose the essay to do with my bullying. My peers thought that the first two paragraphs on my essay needed to be taken out because it was lot of plot. They wanted me to get straight to the point like I was in the third paragraph. They wanted me to make a stronger thesis and install more imagery into the essay. My grammar needed improvement and so did my vocabulary. They loved when I talked about how this experience shaped me today and how it has helped me a better person overall. My peers noticed and really liked the fact that I mentioned that I am happy with myself no matter what someone says about me. My instructor really liked the story of the essay but really wanted me to be

I really enjoyed this video; it was nice to hear Dr. Linton’s talk as it mirrored some of my own thoughts on the issues. I have worked with people with cognitive and/or physical disabilities for over 20 years; this has included children with congenital special needs and people with acquired disability at many different stages of life and acceptance.

Growing up as a middle class white male, I was afforded the privilege to be ignorant of discriminatory practices in relation to race and student achievement. Being white, did not limit my achievements as a student. Only upon reading the textbook and reflection upon my life do I now see that although my academic achievements were not affected by skin color, they were affected by the institutionalized racism of the curriculum. Upon this reflection, I also noticed that there were several ways in which students of another race were affected by their race that I was fortunate to avoid.

At the beginning of this semester, I was very uneducated when it came to writing. I was unsure of how to write essays, summaries, or reading responses because of the lack of writing I have had in high school. Since it was this way, I was very nervous when I started this class and was not sure how well I would do. Now it is the end of the year and I feel that I have improved my writing skills in a tremendous way.

Since the beginning of the semester, my writing has changed and evolved to accommodate and sustain longer essays. With longer essays, there is more room for in-depth analysis. Further analyzing a topic has led me to findings that I did not know existed. As I continue to write, I uncover addition and superior methods to approach my writing to the benefit of me and therefore, my audience. Throughout the semester, I have incorporated techniques to further my narrative throughout my writing.

Thinking back on my essays for this term, the revision process was extremely helpful. In my essays, I would occasionally have issues with phrasing or punctuation usage as well as developing my concepts and being able to express them clearly. Having others revise me essays helped me understand where I wasn’t being clear and helped me catch some bad sentence structures. Often, when peer reviewing, I would spend a lot of time and effort revising other’s essays, but get very little feedback in return. I would often have to review my own essay, which was actually beneficial because it gave me more time to focus on my concepts and think critically about my writing. For example, my argument essay was hard to understand because I had too wide of a subject. I didn’t realize this until I re-read my essay and thought about how everything was hard to connect. I ended up deleting about half of my paper and focusing in on a more specific aspect of my original topic, which helped the essay flow smoothly between my concepts and arguments. Professor Michell was a crucial part of my revision process. Because I didn’t get enough feedback from my peers, I still needed someone else to look over my essay and help me work through my issues. I found it extremely helpful that Professor Michell was open to looking over students essays with them. The feedback provided by her helped me express myself clearly, catch tricky punctuation issues, and connect and develop my concepts more fully.

This week they continued working on the theme of emotions. We read the book “When Sophie gets angry” and played a game that enhanced their motor skills). Something that I observed during the motor activity was that a few of the first group of students had a difficulty in understanding and follow the directions of the motor game. Especially, when they had to roll they needed adult assistance and they did not seem engaged. However, the adults did their best to encourage and support them to roll. During this time other students started moving in the classroom and become disengaged. I was wondering what we could do to support peers to remain engaged and at the same time help the students that needed support. Would it work if we separate team into smaller groups with one adult where students that started being bored have the choice to do something different regarding emotions?

In 2017, it seems engagement in controversial discourse is the ultimate taboo. In fear of offending others, youth avoid discussions of religion, political opinions, and economic problems altogether. Or, in contrast, discussions of these topics turn hostile and have to be extinguished in the classroom. The result of this problem is that many young people do not know what they truly think about controversial topics, and a generation of apathetic thinkers that never go beyond the mainstream media for their opinions is produced. A society without individual core beliefs and values cannot function as a democratic republic.

In September 2017, I began writing 39C and to be honest I believed that I was going to have no problems in this class. The reason being I had taken Writing 39A and was able to pass that class, taken Writing 39B during the previous summer and managed to get an A in the class. Along with having experience of doing research from high school by trying to researching on local social issues and trying to advocate on how to effectively solve the issue; I thought there was nothing more for me to learn. I was very wrong about that statement in about the next three weeks.